A few years ago when I said during a private conversation that people like Schmeiss must not be members of the National Assembly, a high-ranking official responded, “Yes, he cannot be a mature MP, but he is better than some more educated demagogues who haven’t done anything for this country and Schmeiss shed his blood for our land.” Hats off to Arakel Movsisyan for that! However, parliament is also a body of representatives. Despite legislative work that Mr. Movsisyan cannot do due to the lack of education, it also represents the elected representatives of the people and the Republican Party of Armenia to other citizens and generally our nation to the world. When Schmeiss uses the word “hayvan” (asshole) referring to his MP colleague, both the residents ofArmeniaand people interested inArmeniaaround the world may suggest that our apex legislative body is comprised of such persons. Before becoming an MP, one should have explained to Schmeiss that if someone speaks in the parliament during a meeting, the rest must keep silence. As it was not explained to Arakel, he is very surprised, shouting out “everyone must keep silence for this asshole to speak”. Is it possible that Armenian citizen will respect the parliament after this? Is it possible that intellectual man would like to become a member of the National Assembly and sit side-by-side with schmeisses. Let us remind that Arakel Movsisyan behaved in quite the same ignorant manner during a National Assembly meeting some time ago and to his credit, Tigran Torosyan, the Speaker of the National Assembly at the time, dismissed him from the meeting hall. Yesterday Samvel Nikoyan that hasn’t assumed the office of the National Assembly Speaker yet was not so decisive to do that. Generally there is a commission on ethics in civilized countries that denies the right to speak in such cases or doesn’t allow them to take part in the meetings. There is no such commission in Armenia, probably because the majority of MPs desire exactly that – they cannot make a speech anyway, because they are not able to express a coherent idea (except for the aforementioned example) and as for the participation, it is hard to bring them from different kinds of dining places anyway.
Development of Armenian parliamentarianism can be presented with the picture illustratingDarwin’s theory – from monkey to types of prehistoric men, the evolution of which leads to contemporary Homo sapiens. Although, the history of the Armenian parliament evolves in quite an opposite direction.
ARAMABRAHAMYAN
